


Blinded by the White Light

by Cinaed



Category: CSI: Las Vegas
Genre: 5 Things, Episode Tag, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-14
Updated: 2006-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/pseuds/Cinaed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five ways Hodges didn't freak out after the Fannysmackin' episode. And five people David Hodges and Greg Sanders thought they were fooling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Five Ways David Hodges Didn't Freak Out

**I.**

_-the night goes on as I’m fading away-_

When David gets the news in the form of a whisper of “CSI down” filling the halls and then him doing a headcount and realizing that Greg is the only one out in the field at the moment, he doesn’t freak out. Even if it feels like someone has just kicked him in the stomach, he ignores the sensation, tightening his jaw and keeping his breaths deep and even. 

He definitely doesn’t race to Grissom’s office and grab the shift supervisor by the collar, demanding to know the where and the how, insisting on being told the who and the why; instead David just sits down heavily in the privacy of his lab and stares blankly at the nearest wall. 

Ignoring the feeling like he’s been sucker-punched, he reminds himself that he and Greg have only been together for a few weeks, and more to the point, they’re not exactly_out_. David would only earn unsympathetic or bemused looks if he let himself break down. Besides, there will be trace to process, and he doesn’t -- cannot -- trust anyone else to handle the evidence. 

He closes his eyes, breathes in, breathes out, and pastes on a neutral look. 

David makes certain the facade doesn’t slip when a red-eyed Sara hands him the evidence. He instead asks quietly, evenly, “Is this from Greg’s scene?” 

When she just looks at him, her weary expression is answer enough. 

Questions catch in the back of his throat, bitter and sharp like glass shards, questions like “How badly is he hurt?” and “Was he conscious when you saw him?” and he tightens his jaw, choking back the queries because they would sound too fierce and desperate if he were foolish enough to voice them. 

“Thank you,” is all he says, grip tightening on the evidence. He doesn’t watch her leave. 

**II.**

_-just want to scream how could this happen to me-_

Wendy hasn’t even taken two steps out of her lab when David descends, plucking the DNA results from her and saying briskly, “This the results for Greg’s case? I’ve just got my trace analysis back. I’ll give them both to Grissom.” 

He keeps his tone calm, unruffled, as though he is just trying to save her some time, as though it isn’t that he needs to see the results of anything regarding Greg’s case. She can’t possibly know that this is how he deals, by learning all he can about the crime. Each new detail feels like he’s almost touching Greg, and this is how he reassures himself that Greg is still alive, still here, at least until his shift is over and he can get over to the hospital. 

There is a tightness in his chest, a pressure beginning to build up that feels suspiciously like a scream of frustration, when Wendy just blinks at him. He quirks an eyebrow and says, “Well?” and is almost absurdly grateful that his voice comes out as calm and unruffled as before. 

“Okay,” Wendy says slowly, eyeing him as though she thinks he’s lost his mind, and David very pointedly doesn’t think about the fact that she might suspect an ulterior motive, that he might be screwing up and outing him and Greg, fucking up royally because Greg doesn’t need any more stress, not when he’s in the _hospital_ and-- 

David breathes in, breathes out, and then nods and walks briskly towards where he last saw Grissom. He refuses to lose it over a minor bout of paranoia. After all, Wendy isn’t going to figure anything out just because he offered to take her results to Grissom. 

He tries to ignore the prickling sensation on the back of his neck that is Wendy staring after him. 

**III.** 

_-can’t stand the pain and I can’t make it go away-_

Grissom looks as composed as always, but David knows there must be some inner turmoil there, because by now facts have traveled far enough along the grapevine that he knows that Greg was alone in the car, that Grissom had sent him out _alone_. 

He suspects that Grissom is feeling a knot of guilt twist in his stomach, guilt that feels much like the worry gnawing at David’s self-control and tearing apart the barriers that his common sense has built over the years. Soon, he knows, he will do something irrevocably stupid, and everything will fall, will collapse into ruin. 

There is an ache, too, in his chest that makes it harder to breathe with each passing moment, and so he gets straight to the point, telling Grissom the analysis and DNA results in unusually concise sentences. He can feel Grissom’s curious gaze pressing against his skin, an uncomfortable pressure, and bites back a comment of, “I’m not a bug, Grissom.” He just looks at the map and swallows against the nausea that rises at the sight of Greg’s name. 

Grissom is still studying him though, and David holds himself very still, because the urge to grab Grissom’s shoulders -- to shake every last detail out of the man, maybe, or perhaps to demand to be allowed to go the hospital _nownownow_ -- is consuming his thoughts and tensing every muscle in his frame, and it is all he can do to keep from lunging at the other man. 

David breathes in, breathes out, closes his eyes briefly and ignores the weight of that intense stare. “I’m not a bug,” he says without thinking. He doesn’t look at Grissom’s expression when the other man says mildly, “I know,” because he isn’t certain that he wants to see what’s on Grissom’s face. 

When he finally summons enough courage to open his eyes, Grissom is studying the map, and it isn’t until David slips out of the room and is halfway to his lab that he realizes he’s shaking with something akin to relief. 

**IV.**

_-try to make a sound but no one hears me-_

Bobby comes to see him just before the end of the shift, looking more than a little world-weary. Even his hair seems less carefree, flopping listlessly into his eyes. He hesitates at the doorway, and when David just looks at him and doesn’t tell him to leave or to stay, he steps inside. 

“Thought ya might wanna know that Nick and the others are goin’ to see Greg right after shift. They’re bringin’ him some food,” Bobby says quietly, and his eyes are all-too-knowing, because Bobby is one of the select few who actually _do_ know about David and Greg’s relationship. He runs a hand through his hair and adds, softer, “If ya need me to drive ya anywhere….” 

David shakes his head at that. “I’m going to go to his apartment, check on his fish, grab that book he’s been trying to finish for the past week.” He forces his voice to be straightforward. Even if Bobby _knows_ and there is no need for pretence, David realizes that if he lets emotion color his voice now, he will break down and lose what little control he has left. 

And so when Bobby takes a quick, furtive glance out the door to make sure no one’s around, and then takes two giant steps forward to tug David into a fierce, almost desperate hug, David doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t let the sour-tasting grief and fear that has been lingering in the back of his throat all night long surge from his lips as a sob, just closes his eyes and doesn’t push Bobby away. Even if he wants to collapse, to shake himself apart in Bobby’s supportive grip, he breathes in, breathes out, and swallows back the wretched words that want to escape his lips. 

“He’ll be okay,” Bobby says firmly into his ear, and then releases him, his eyes suspiciously bright. 

The bitterness at the back of his throat is still there, so David just nods and tries to find solace in Bobby’s confident words. Of course Greg will be fine. This is Greg they are talking about. The physical -- and emotional -- scars will heal with time, and soon Greg will be his normal exuberant self. 

“He’ll be okay,” Bobby repeats, voice almost painfully earnest, and David nods again. He doesn’t trust himself to speak. 

**V.**

_-try to see but I’m blinded by the white light-_

He has always hated hospitals, and cannot help but linger outside the main doors for a long moment, not looking forward to the overabundant scent of disinfectant and overwhelming white of the hospital corridors. David breathes in the last fresh air he’ll have for a few hours, breathes out in a single sharp exhale, and then steps into the hospital. 

The bright, garish lights temporarily blind him, and he finds himself squinting even as he gets the directions to Greg’s room from an overly perky nurse. A few corridors later, he is hovering uncertainly in front of the door to Greg’s room. Another deep breath, a squaring of his shoulders as though preparing for battle (and in a way he is preparing for a battle against himself, against reactions which might hurt Greg somehow), and then he opens the door. 

David doesn’t let his hands tighten into fists, doesn’t erupt into a string of profanities that would make a sailor blush, though that’s what he wants to do when he sees Greg’s bruised and battered face for the first time. He doesn’t let the bitterness at the back of his throat, which has increased tenfold in mere seconds, spew forth harsh, vindictive curses against the ones who did this, doesn’t throw the book he’s brought with him across the room or punch the nearest wall, even if adrenaline is flowing swift and dangerous through his veins. 

Instead, he coaxes a smile on his face, lifts the hand not in a cast to his lips, and kisses Greg’s palm (gently, oh so gently) as he murmurs into the unharmed skin there a low, hoarse, “Hey.” 

“Hey,” Greg says, and David doesn’t say a word when Greg’s voice cracks; he just presses more soft kisses into that undamaged palm, and lets Greg shake himself apart with tears and anguished words.  



	2. Five People They Thought They Were Fooling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five people David Hodges and Greg Sanders thought they were fooling.

**I.** 

_-Sara Sidle-_

By the time Sara gets back to the crime lab, she’s gotten her feelings under control. No more tears? Check. No more hitching little breaths that were actually repressed sobs? Check. No more moments of half-rage, half-despair that made her hands start shaking? Check. 

She is completely in control of her emotions by the time she walks into the trace lab to give Hodges the evidence. Her control doesn’t falter even at the expression on Hodges’s face, because the look is too composed, too neutral. The expression is not at all like his usual ones, which are animated whether he is conveying disgust or amusement, and the look alone is enough to send alarm bells off in Sara’s head. 

She hadn’t even _thought_ about Hodges, hadn’t really even considered him when Greg had asked in a low whisper for her to let everyone know he was going to be okay. She had thought of steeling herself to tell Nick, Warrick, Grissom, Catherine, but not Hodges. 

Which had been extremely stupid of her, she realizes, as she hands over the evidence and he asks too softly, too coolly, “Is this from Greg’s scene?” After all, she’s a CSI. She’d noticed a few weeks earlier when the interaction between Greg and Hodges had…shifted. It had become more playful, almost intimate. Oh, they still flung constant insults at each other, but there was a softer sentiment underlying each insult. 

Sara hadn’t thought too deeply about it -- after all, Greg and _Hodges_? -- but now, looking at Hodges, noting the tension radiating off his frame that he is trying to conceal, she realizes that perhaps she should have tried to figure their relationship out. Perhaps then she would know what to do, standing here and watching Hodges’s too-still features. 

Should she tell him about Greg’s condition, how bruised and broken he’d looked on the ground, or perhaps how he’d still tried to be a CSI despite being unable to see? But Hodges hasn’t asked anything about Greg, just the evidence, and maybe he doesn’t want to know. Sara just looks at him for a moment. It seems as though she’s aged twenty years in the past few hours, and she thinks she could sleep a thousand years and still feel this weary. She wonders if Hodges feels this tired inside, or if he is still trapped in the adrenaline-producing grip of fear and anger. 

A muscle jumps in his jaw, and she feels something twist in her chest, a sympathy pain, because she can just imagine the tension knotting his shoulders and how his jaw must be aching. 

“Thank you,” he says at last, and looks down at the evidence, expression going dark. 

There is something she should say now, Sara thinks. Something to chase the shadows out of his eyes, to ease the tension from his frame. But if there is one thing she knows about David Hodges, it is that he despises empty platitudes.

She swallows back the inanities that rise to her lips and leaves silently, feeling a thousand unsaid words fall to the floor in her wake. 

**II.** 

_-Wendy Simms-_

Wendy takes two, three steps at the most out of the DNA lab before Hodges is suddenly in front of her, yanking her results out of her grasp as though he has some long-established claim to them that she wasn’t aware of. She cannot help but stare, even as he says, “This the results from Greg’s case? I just got my trace analysis back. I’ll give them both to Grissom.” 

She should probably do something other than blink at him, but she is too bemused to do anything save precisely that. His tone had been matter-of-fact, casual, as though he was saying something as obvious as the sky was blue or that Grissom liked bugs, but in all the time Wendy has been here, Hodges has never offered to take her results to anyone. 

When she doesn’t say anything, he raises an eyebrow. “Well?” His tone is calm, belying the tension she sees in his jaw and in the way he’s hunching his shoulders a little. Hey, no one said only CSIs were observant. 

“Okay,” she says slowly, getting the feeling that she’s missing something here. Or maybe Hodges is missing his sanity. And then, when a flash of _something_ flickers across his face, too quick for her to define, but certainly an emotion she’s never seen on his face before, she recalls last week, when Archie had laughed and muttered something under his breath about Hodges and Greg needing to get a room. She’d thought he was joking at the time, but…. 

Wendy cannot help but stare a bit incredulously after Hodges as he turns on heel and walks away. After a moment though, she retreats back into the safety of her lab. She needs time to muse about this epiphany some more, to try and puzzle out how that relationship could _work_, and to figure out a way to let them know she was all right with it, even if she really, really didn’t get it. 

**III.** 

_-Gil Grissom-_ 

Hand in hand with experience come disaster and tragedy, Grissom knows. It is a fact of life that only through pain does one truly mature. Still, that doesn’t mean he has to like the fact that he had made an error in judgment and it could have cost Greg Sanders his life. He understands all too well that experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. 

Everyone handles the disaster that coincides with experience differently, of course, and Grissom finds himself studying his fellow CSIs, gauging their reactions and making note of their emotional state, as is his nature. That doesn’t explain why he finds himself studying David Hodges, who is definitely not a CSI and probably would scoff at being mistaken for one. 

Perhaps it is because this is a side of Hodges he has never seen. For the four years he has known the man, Grissom has never seen Hodges so restrained. Usually the man is either brownnosing or letting his tongue wag with some ridiculous story no one really pays attention to, but now the trace tech is silent, expression closed off, and when he does show emotion, it is earnestness and the subdued attitude of one willing to listen to anything Grissom has to say and to help in any way he can, not to get on Grissom’s good side but because this is _important_. It could almost be that Grissom realizes why, exactly, this is all so important to Hodges, and he is waiting to see if the other man is going to fall apart right in front of him. 

“I’m not a bug,” Hodges says suddenly, an odd note to his voice, and Grissom just looks at him for a long moment. Hodges’s head is bowed, eyes closed, a strained expression on his face. 

“I know,” Grissom says at last, and watches as Hodges’s hands begin to shake. He remembers the days after the lab explosion, when Greg’s hands had trembled in much the same manner, and he realizes that Hodges is close to snapping. 

He turns his gaze upon the map, and doesn’t look up when Hodges leaves. Hodges’s emotional state is intriguing, yes, but Hodges also deserves his privacy should he have a breakdown. 

Grissom, meanwhile, has a crime to solve. 

**IV.** 

_-Nick Stokes-_

It’s funny, Nick thinks to himself, that if someone had asked who the most jaded individual was at the Clark County Crime Lab, he would have put Sara and Hodges warring for first place, and if someone had wanted to know the most optimistic, he would have put Greg as the unchallenged king. 

Now, however, he thinks Greg will no longer be quite as optimistic as before, that someone else will steal his crown, and Nick himself feels so world-weary that he suspects he has taken temporary reign as the most jaded person. He is just so _sick_ of this city of sin, just so tired of these screwed-up individuals, just so angry that things keep happening to people he cares about. 

So when he sees Bobby Dawson leaving the trace lab looking a little red-eyed, he doesn’t bother asking what’s wrong, because he knows all-too-well what’s wrong. Greg is, well, the heart and soul of the lab, when you really think about it, and the lab feels barren without him. CSIs and technicians alike can feel the emptiness. Even Hodges--

Well, maybe especially Hodges. Over the past couple of weeks, Nick has been trying very hard not to notice (or at least to pretend to not notice) the way Greg’s slapping Hodges on the shoulder has turned into a touch that lingers a bit longer than necessary, or the way that some of the trademark cynical look on Hodges’s face melts away every time Greg bursts into his lab, or the way that Greg’s been making vague excuses as to why he is too busy for a night out with Nick and Warrick. 

His curiosity getting the better of him, he finds himself hesitating in front of the trace lab and looking inside. Hodges sits on a stool, staring blankly into space. His shoulders are slumped, and Nick is suddenly reminded of Atlas, who carried all the weight of the world on his back, because there is a weariness on Hodges’s face that Nick has never seen before. He thinks he understands now, the difference between cynicism and hopelessness, and right now Hodges looks to be in the midst of despair. 

However, even as Nick studies him, Hodges straightens, his eyes clearing, his mouth firming into a grim little frown, and he looks determined. Nick has no way of reading the other man’s mind, but he’s not an idiot. He knows that Hodges has conquered his anguish or at least bottled it up, in favor of being strong for Greg. 

Nick continues to linger outside the doorway, just watching Hodges, considering that dogged expression and trying to tell himself that he should feel the same way, should be strong for his best friend rather than filled with cynicism. After a moment, he shakes his head and resumes his original walk towards the locker room, trying to ignore the voice in his head that mocks him, quietly taunting. 

After all, he cannot help but be a bit pessimistic over the fact that _Hodges_ has someone, has a person like _Greg_, and he, Nick Stokes, is alone. 

**V.** 

_-Elizabeth Madison-_

She doesn’t know who they think they’re fooling. Elizabeth has been a nurse at Desert Palms for almost twenty years now, and she can tell the difference between the concern of a friend and the concern of a lover. And this man, with his dark scowl and too intent eyes and quick, irritated question of “Where is Greg Sanders’ room?” was definitely in the latter category. He hadn’t even thanked her, just rushed off to the room. 

When she goes to check on Greg an hour later, she finds that the scowling man is still there, stroking the inside of Greg’s wrist and leaning close to the bed. She hovers in the doorway, watching. The man’s not scowling now, but he _is_ wearing a look torn between amusement and irritation. 

“I’m not going to be a sacrifice to your psychotic mother, Greg,” he says, and rolls his eyes. “Therefore, we will wait until _after_ she’s dealt with the fact that you’re a CSI before we go for the final blow and let her know we’re in a relationship.” He pauses. “Though I will bring some salt and sprinkle it around your bed if that will make you feel better.” 

“My mom’s overprotective, David, not evil,” comes the amused response. 

The man -- David -- just raises an eyebrow and assumes an expression of utter disbelief. His thumb is still stroking up and down the insides of Greg’s wrist, a lover’s caress, and Elizabeth retreats, giving them their privacy. If Greg is in pain, she knows that he’ll get David to press the call button. 

She shakes her head as she moves onto the next room. Honestly, she doesn’t know who they think they’re fooling. Do they really think Greg’s mother won’t put two and two together as soon as she walks into the room?   



End file.
